


U-Keep the Key

by jjtaylor



Category: Love the Hard Way
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-17
Updated: 2010-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:35:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjtaylor/pseuds/jjtaylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He knows that neither of them ever liked movies with sad endings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	U-Keep the Key

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to for beta.

Jack goes back to the U-Stor-It facility a week after he's out, half-hoping that his things will be untouched, dusty like his old apartment under two years of grime, but otherwise exactly the way he left them. He thinks it has to mean something if they're there, something if they're not. Maybe he doesn't deserve a writer's room, or maybe because he's alone now, he doesn't need a place to hide.

When he gets to the door, there is a new sign posted with the name Federman, and he doesn't even bother to knock. No one else sits inside their U-Stor-It room. People only keep their possessions in these storage units, not their secret lives and dreams.

As Jack's leaving, he hears someone call out his name. It's Dennis, running down the corridor, keys jangling on his belt. "Jack," he shouts. And then when he's closer, huffing a little, he asks, "Just got out?"

Jack smirks slightly. "Early parole."

Dennis nods. "Sorry about your space."

"Aw, it's nothing," Jack says.

"Had to rent it out, you know, didn't know how long you'd be gone and rent...." he trails off. Jack nods, his hands in his pockets. "Still got your stuff, though," Dennis says.

Jack's quiet for a moment. This isn't how it was supposed to happen. Either his space was there or it wasn't. "What?"

"Your books and things. Didn't keep much in there, did you? It all fit into a box. Got it in my office."

It's a long walk back to the apartment, and though the box of books is heavy, Jack does not get tired.

  
Jack asks, the first time, if Claire minds if he meets her outside the lab. It isn't Jack's style, to ask. He just shows up, when he wants, where he wants. But he owes her asking, because maybe she doesn't want him hanging around. Maybe she doesn't want to see him.

She says yes the first time, and that's enough. He waits for her every day after that. He never came back for her that night, and if the police hadn't found her before she bled to death, it would have been his broken promise that killed her. So he's trying to make up for it, in a way. Trying to be dependable. Still, she always gives him that smile, with her eyes half-closed, like when she opens them, he might be gone.

Jack leans outside the building against the brick wall, smoking when she comes out. The first thing she says every time is, "Hello, Jack," in exactly the same even tone. One day, she slips her hand inside his. He twines his fingers with hers and squeezes, and then stills and breathes in deep, remembering how he thought about her every night, hoped her life had gotten better without him. He hadn't realized how much he missed touching her. How he thought it might never happen again.

"Jack?" she asks, sounding worried.

"Hey," he says, forcing a smile at her. "You hungry?"

He does not let go of her hand.

  
Claire has a friend who has a friend who owns a used bookshop. Claire suggests one night as he's picking her up at the lab that he call this guy, Joseph.

"For a job?" Jack asks, unable to hide either the skepticism or the hope in his voice. Claire knows just how to get him to do it, too, mentioning it just that once, leaving the phone number on the torn piece of notebook paper on the kitchen table, next to his first edition of Ezra Pound.

She knows he is unable to resist temptation.

Joseph has grey hair and tight wrinkles around his grey eyes. His bookshop is 400 square feet and smells like cloves and Jack runs his fingers along a row of book spines while Joseph asks him questions about what he likes to read and when he's available to work.

Jack does not ask how Claire's friend managed to get him a job like this when he's barely a month out of Rikers, but he doesn't say anything to Joseph about it, and when Claire asks how his first day was, he just kisses her and asks if she likes him as a working stiff.

Jack is good at spotting first editions. He ends up buying _Moby Dick_ after bargaining Joseph down. He shows it to Claire, and she reads part of it aloud while they sit on the couch together, her head on this thigh.

Three weeks at the job, when he and Joseph are unloading books they've just bought at an estate auction, Jack's eyes fall on a thin white scar traveling up Joseph's arm. He looks away quickly when Joseph notices, but Joseph says, in a clear, steady voice, "Cell block 8, Rikers, five years."

  
Jack takes Claire out for Italian food with his second paycheck. He toys with his spaghetti, watches Claire drink her water and ignore her wine. He dances his fingers across the table, nervous without a cigarette, and when she reaches her hand out to press his down along the tablecloth, he looks up at her and smiles, and brushes his thumb across the back of her hand.

Halfway through dessert, someone comes up to their table. A girl, small, dark hair, pert breasts in a slinky dress that looks out of place in this restaurant and more suited for the club. Jack thinks it might be one of Claire's friends, except that suddenly she's at Jack's elbow, her hand on his arm. Jack leans back in his chair and looks at her.

"Marie," she says, talking fast, and she's asking where he's been and why she hasn't seen him and he has the sudden image of her beneath him, her fingers digging into his back. Abruptly he turns away from her, meets Claire's eyes, which are narrowed, but her expression is otherwise unreadable.

"I'm having dinner," Jack says, interrupting whatever Marie was saying about dancing and later tonight.

"So am I," Marie says, gesturing back to her table, where a lonely looking girl who could be her sister sits.

"I'm having dinner with Claire," Jack says, looking from Marie to Claire with a sharp jab of his chin.

Marie huffs. "See you around," Jack says, and without waiting for a response, picks his fork back up and takes a bite of cheesecake, then looks up at Claire, who is barely concealing a smile.

"What?" he says, shoving another forkful into his mouth.

  
Jack watches her study, on her stomach on the bed. She's always studying, or reading, or reviewing notes.

She is gorgeous like this, sexy, her lip between her teeth, her hand brushing her hair away from her face. Jack wants her naked, her mouth latched to his throat, his fingers sliding over her clit. He wants to push inside her, feel her clench around him, squeeze him tight. They haven't slept together for two years, but he remembers how she feels, her breast in his palm, her breathy pleas and the groans she'd tease out of him, the sounds they made together, the bed frame creaking underneath them.

Jack knows that they should wait, that sex is no longer just sex between them, that he can't just say he wants to fuck her and have that be enough. But he goes to her anyway, without any idea what to say instead, and leans in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, trying not to need her.

And when she looks up and smiles at him, closes her book and sets it on the floor and calls him over, he knows he's practically running to the bed, wrapping his arms around her, whispering her name into her hair.

He knows that neither of them ever liked movies with sad endings. They had to tell each other they preferred them to happy endings, though, because neither of them wanted to admit to liking something that they could never have.

  
When they fight, it's about money, and the time Claire spends at the lab, and her friends, and Jack's refusal to talk. They never fight about the past. That's another life, another story, a book they've read and put back on the shelf.

Jack says that her friends don't think he's good enough and that she doesn't think he's good enough and Claire says he thinks he's still a thief. There is shouting and Jack doesn't remember half of what he says, and he ends up grabbing his notebook and slamming the door shut behind him.

He can hear Claire crying, loud and annoying, behind the door. He gets as far as the stairwell and then he just sits and lights a cigarette and opens his notebook. He writes the scene over again, where he ends up taking her into his arms and telling her that she makes him a better person. He brings her flowers. He rubs her temples. She kisses him in forgiveness.

The top stair digs into his back.

Just before midnight, the door creaks open. Jack turns, and Claire, in her pajamas, her face red and puffy even in the dark, whispers, "Do you want to come back in?"

And he rushes up to her, kisses her hard, apologizes for things he's not even sure he did.

It's baffling being with her, but Jack cannot imagine being alone.

  
Jack is making fried eggs and bacon for breakfast and Claire sits at the table, rubbing the sleepiness from her eyes. She reaches for Jack's cigarette, forgotten and burned halfway down to the stub, and takes a drag.

Jack watches her lips around the cigarette, watches her exhale the smoke in a curl.

And then reaches over, spatula still in hand, and swipes the cigarette from her and stubs it out.

"Don't," he says. "You're the smart one. Don't start that."

"You do it," Claire says, somewhere between a pout and a smirk.

"Yeah, well, I'm the stupid one."

"You're not stupid, Jack," she says, starting at him.

"Come on, now, the eggs are ready, give me your plate."

That afternoon, he spends half an hour staring at nicotine gum at the supermarket before he goes in to work.

  
Jack stops by her place Saturday morning. It's her day off, and he hopes that she's slept late and that maybe she'll let him crawl into bed with her or maybe they'll just eat cereal and drink coffee at her table and she'll smile at him and make him feel like the sun's shining down bright and hot on his face.

There are a man and a woman hugging Claire outside her door. They are unmistakably her parents. Jack is too close to turn the corner and run without being obvious, but it's too late, anyway, because Claire has seen him and is waving him over. Jack slows, but he's caught, and there's nowhere to go.

Claire introduces then, and Mr. and Mrs. Harrison smile kindly. Jack feels panic rising in him, and bile in his throat.

"So tell us about yourself," Mrs. Harrison says. "What do you do, Jack?"

"I work at a used bookstore," Jack says, drumming his fingers nervously across his thigh.

"Oh, well, that's nice. Must do a lot of reading."

Jack doesn't remember most of the conversation, only that halfway through Claire took his hand, and that when she bid her parents goodbye, Mr. Harrison told Jack that he ought to come up to Maine sometime with Claire.

Jack follows Claire silently up to her place, and she pours him a cup of coffee which he sips without paying attention.

"Jack," Claire says with a sigh, taking the seat across from him.

"Was it nice there, for you to have your parents meet your boyfriend?" He kicks the table leg on the last word and his coffee splashes over the rim of his cup.

"Jack."

"Did you tell them you're in love with me? Tell them you're you want to marry me? How about how I'm the one who made you slit your wrists? How I'm on parole and can't actually leave the state for another few months so I can't come Maine to meet the rest of your family?"

Claire only clears her throat and crosses her arms across her chest. Jack is never sure what to do when she doesn't fight back.

"I didn't say anything, Jack. I just told them you were my friend who was going to be a famous novelist someday."

"What'd you tell them that for?" Jack says, quietly.

"Because it's true," Claire says, and stands up and puts her arms around Jack's shoulders and kisses his cheek. Jack does not deserve this tenderness. He wants to tell Claire that she ought to get a guy she can introduce to her parents, but he just holds her close and kisses her and thinks that he wants every morning to begin like this, with the taste of coffee and a smile on her lips.

  
He likes it best when she just looks at him from across the room, and he knows that she wants him. He doesn't have to flirt, doesn't have to try. He could be doing something stupid, like folding the laundry, or hanging up his coat, and sometimes he pretends he doesn't notice her looking at him and grinning, and it's perfect when she comes over and demands his attention. He feigns surprise and she kisses him and he pulls her down on the couch with him.

And sometimes, when Claire is asleep, Jack slides into his stomach and reaches his hand down to the floor and brushes his fingers over the wood, over the spot on the floor he knows was covered in Claire's blood. He's scrubbed it over and over, but when he brushes his fingers over the spot and remembers what he can do to her, the visible evidence of hurt that he's caused. He has to remember, so that it never happens again. He'll die before he hurts her again like that.

Except that Jack knows his death would hurt her, too. His life never meant anything, but now it means something to Claire.

  
He wakes when Claire gets up for her early shift; he kisses her and brushes her hair away from her face. He walks her down to the sidewalk, kissing her lipstick off amidst the auto parts, and watches her walk off down the street. And then he goes back up to his desk, a small folding table with just his notebooks in the corner of the apartment where they used to keep the empty bottles. The radio is in the living room and he can play jazz as loud as he likes without having to lie to anyone about where he is. Sometimes he even reads what he's written to Claire when she comes over that night. He has a bookshelf for his first editions. The collection has grown exponentially since he's been working at the bookstore.

He writes for a few hours every day before he goes in to work. Some mornings he gets nowhere, and some mornings he doesn't want to stop when he has to leave. He always carries his notebook in his jacket pocket.

"Close to your heart," Claire says.

"You're my heart," Jack always responds.

Jack buys Claire a book of love stories. He tells her their story isn't in there, but the stories are good anyway. She tells him their love story is too good to be in a book and that no one would believe it. Except, she says, they'll believe it when he writes it.

When he comes home, his eyes always fall on the sign hanging over the wall above his desk, hung with masking tape and a little crooked:

_Wonderful Place_, it reads, in Claire's small, clear handwriting.


End file.
